Entries in comedy
(8)

Comedy is tough. I mean...I've been unsuccessfully attempting it on & off here in this space for over five years now.

Late night TV is tough. These days, late night TV is a rapidly-shifting area with six-to-ten hilarious white males competing for dominance over the landscape. Yeah yeah yeah...I know that Arsenio is back. C'mon now though...nobody's really noticed.

In the past year, we've seen Jimmy Fallon replace Jay Leno. Seth Meyers slid into Jimmy Fallon's spot. David Letterman announced his retirement. Stephen Colbert leapt from Comedy Central to claim his chair. Just yesterday, Craig Ferguson announced his imminent departure from the Late Late Show. Who will replace him? It most definitely won't be Chelsea Handler, who recently left her late night show on E! & is now heading to Netflix. Maybe Ferguson's replacement will be a woman. Maybe said woman will be black. As such, the A.V. Club ran a speculative article complete with Aisha Tyler's photo.

Back in the 80's, one of my favorite movies was definitely Revenge of the Nerds. It was this film about a bunch of geeks who went to college and formed a geek fraternity. It starred that one guy from ER and that other guy from thirtysomething and had scenes depicting both extended urination and extended eructation. Also...a panty raid. Also...boobs. By the end, we grow to love those geeks. They stage a concert and the college campus embraces them, despite how geeky they are. WE ARE ALL GEEKS.

With geekdom in mind, I found myself back at Union Hall (sans bacon) on Tuesday night for the latest edition of Geeking Out, a geeky comedy/storytelling series hosted by FiPS' former managing editor Kerri Doherty. She's been hosting the series for a while now but I'm a bad acquaintance who's never actually made it to a single show. Basically, a bunch of people get up on stage and geek out over pop culture topics. Tuesday's lineup was to feature both comedienne Jeneane Garofalo and eighteen-time Moth Storyslam champion Adam Wade. Easy decision: I decided to shell out $5 for the ticket.

If there are two things that we here at FiPS are obsessed with, it's comedy and real estate. So naturally we caught ourselves drooling like idiots when the Post ran an article featuring the living quarters of our favorite neighborhood comedian and Bob's Burgers voice actor, Eugene Mirman.

Located somewhere near 5th and Lincoln, Mirman's living quarters are made up of the top two floors of a four-story townhouse, which he describes as "about 1.000 square feet, including the outdoor space."

Here's a little snippet from the Post article:

"The first floor of the duplex has a large open living room and kitchen, along with the couple’s bedroom and the apartment’s sole bathroom. A woodburning fireplace, a wall of exposed brick and the overgrown leaves of an ivy-like plant that wrap around the staircase give the place a cozy, rustic feel."

You can read more about SLASH drool over the idea of living in your own Eugene Mirman duplex here.

In the wake of Hurricane Sandy and the who-names-a-winter-storm-Nor'easter known as "Athena," we must rememeber to always have laughter. Guffaw at Mother Nature in all her arbitrary bitchiness! For this, we bring you "Funny in Park Slope": the best (or, at least, most frequent) comedy shows in our fair 'hood and environs:

* Pretty Good Friends w/Eugene Mirman, Union Hall: Eugene Mirman is basically the resident monarch of Park Slope comedy. And he rules benevolently, sharing with us weekly his funny friends. Most, if not all, of the times I've gone to this show, there's been a pretty great surprise guest, too: e.g. Demetri Martin or David Cross. Even so, the highlight is often Mirman's crowd banter. You will want to hug him and/or steal him over to your house to just say funny things at you all the time. Sundays, 7:30pm, $7.

* Party Machine, Union Hall: "Professional party hosts," which is an actual thing you can actually write on actual business cards, Arden Myrin and Lisa Delarios hype the crowd for a slew of stand-up, musicians, and other variety acts. Monthly, dates vary.